taking the hill

[rodeodance]

or NOT!-------look at the stat!




.......... Number of unidentified bodies, assumedly murdered by death squads, found on the streets of Baghdad in June: 453, a rise of 41% over January, the month before "surge" operations began, according to unofficial Iraqi Health Ministry statistics taken from morgue counts. ..........

........... Percentage of water engineers who have left Iraq: 40%, according to Oxfam's report. Similar percentages of middle-class professionals - doctors, teachers, lawyers - have evidently fled as well. According to Oxfam, some universities and hospitals in Baghdad have lost up to 80% of their staffs. ..........

............ Increase in bombs dropped in Iraq in the first six months of 2007 compared with the
first six months of 2006: Fivefold. ...........


........ Estimated total cost of the Iraq war, if Robert Sunshine's "optimistic scenario" - 30,000 US troops left in Iraq by 2010 - plays out: More than $1 trillion. (If his less optimistic scenario proves accurate - 75,000 troops in 2010 - closer to $1.5 trillion.)
.........

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IH15Ak03.html


DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA
Escalation in Iraq by the numbers
By Tom Engelhardt
Aug 15, 2007

.......................

Here, then, is escalation in Iraq by the numbers - almost all of them continue to "surge" - as of mid-August 2008: